The Last President. Michael Kurland
about the job,” Kit said.
“I assumed,” Adams told him. “Who else can you talk to about the Company but an old lag like me?”
“A strange thing happened to me yesterday,” Kit said. “And it doesn’t exactly involve the Company.”
“Tell me about it,” Adams said, looking interested.
Kit described the trip to the police station in the early morning, the events leading up to the phone call, and the call itself.
“So you got them off,” Adams said.
“Yes. I don’t know whether I was right or wrong, but I couldn’t see that I had any choice.” He picked up a twig and broke it between his fingers. “What do you think?”
“There are several interesting possibilities that present themselves,” Adams said. He ticked them off on his fingers. “One: it may not have been the President, or even the White House, you spoke to.”
“What?” Kit looked startled. “I hadn’t thought of that! How—?”
”Easy,” Adams said. “According to prearranged plan, in case they get caught they tell the police to call you, and then they tell you to call the White House. Meanwhile, under the street by the police station, a henchman is splicing the phone wire and practicing his imitation of that famous presidential voice.”
“Son of a bitch!” Kit said.
“Two,” Adams said, “it was Ober and the President, and everything they told you was completely true.”
“I vote for two,” Kit said.
“Three,” Adams said, “it was Ober and the President, but the whole story was a complete fabrication. Which would imply that a group of common criminals have something so serious on the White House that they can make the President and his chief domestic adviser lie for them.
“Four: The President of the United States, for purely political motives, had his agents burglarizing and bugging the offices of the Democratic National Committee.
“Five: Ober was doing it without the President’s knowledge or consent, but was able to get him to agree to cover it up.”
“I don’t like any of those but two,” Kit said. “I’ve been mulling over variants of three, four, and five all day while I typed out my report.”
“Your response was completely correct in any of those scenarios except one,” Adams said. “And if the President tells you to do something that’s proper to do, then it’s your job to do it. I agree that option one isn’t very likely.”
“You think it’s proper of me to help get off his men if what they were doing was actually a burglary for political motives?”
“If you knew that for sure,” Adams said, “then no.”
“What you’re saying is that the President’s motives are none of my concern, is that right?”
“Not at all. What I’m saying is that it is not your privilege to guess at the President’s motives. It is, however, your job to make a full report of this to your superiors and let them evaluate the President’s motives and what to do about them.”
“I’m doing that. But I’d really like to figure this out, for my own sake. None of it really makes sense. Cubans infiltrating the Democrats?”
“I doubt that,” Adams said. “But I’m quite willing to believe that the President of the United States thinks there are Communist agents secretly supporting the party that’s trying to oust him—implacable enemy of communism that he is. The man doesn’t seem to trust anyone.”
“Don’t you think it could have been just a political move?”
Adams shrugged. “Sure,” he said. “But that’s the most stupid of the possibilities. Any professional intelligence officer would have assessed the gain against the possible damage and dropped the idea. If you get caught, you could blow the whole campaign, and if you don’t get caught, what can you learn? Where the next pep rally is going to be held? No, if I had to vote, I’d go with the President’s paranoia.”
“But you think I did right in going along with it?”
“I’m not going to give you right or wrong,” Adams said, “but you did what you had to do. You had no acceptable choice.”
Kit nodded. “But it’s nice to hear someone else say it.”
Adams looked up at the gathering clouds for a moment, “I’ll tell you something else.”
“What’s that?”
“Be prepared for a sudden job offer from the White House.”
“What kind?”
“I don’t know, but it will either be in the Executive Office Building or in Antarctica. And listen—either way, keep in touch.”
PRESIDENT REELECTED
LANDSLIDE 61% MAJORITY
carries every state but massachusetts:
fails to carry district of columbia
—Washington Post, November 8, 1972
1. Special Investigations Unit.
CHAPTER TWO
Charlie Ober ran his staff meetings like a Prussian officer. When he was at UCLA he’d taken a course in European History in the Nineteenth Century, and The Prussian General Staff had been required reading. The description of the orderly, Spartan existence of the Prussian officer had touched Ober somewhere deep in his soul. He joined ROTC, but found them too namby-pamby and disorganized, so he dropped out six months later. The advertising agency he’d worked for after graduation had frowned on Prussian tactics in the office, but these government types almost seemed to expect it. They lined up docilely in the rows of seats in front of his desk, waited quietly for him to come in, stood as he entered, and otherwise behaved as subordinates should. It was very gratifying to see how effective his methods of office management were.
They watched without expression as he marched across to his desk, his broad but trim frame held in military fashion, his dark, thinning hair slicked back against his skull. It never occurred to Charlie Ober that his childish tantrums when thwarted, along with his absolute power over his subordinates’ jobs, might have something to do with their attitude.
“The President wants to start this term with a clean slate,” Ober told the mass of faces of the assembled executive staff staring up at him like pink raisins in a pudding. And a token black raisin. “So he wants us all to hand in our resignations.”
There was a murmur of surprised protest from the raisins.
“Now, if we’ve done good jobs, and I’m sure all of us have, then this will just be pro forma. The President will spend a week or two going over all the resignations, and refusing to accept those of persons he’s happy with. He’d appreciate a short paper with your resignation telling him why you should have your job back. You know—what you’ve done while in the office, why the office itself shouldn’t be abolished.”
A young staffer stood up. Ober didn’t remember his name. “You mean we work our asses off getting the President reelected, and for the next two weeks we won’t know whether we get to keep our jobs? That doesn’t seem fair. Why doesn’t he just ask for the resignations of those he’s not satisfied with? Why make the whole staff go through this?”
Ober leaned forward, his palms down on the desk, and memorized the young man’s face. “It’s not just the executive staff,” he told them. “Everyone in an appointive office anywhere in the country is being asked the same as we are. It’s to show the voters that they’re going to get a new beginning. ‘A new beginning’ is the phrase we’ve picked for the first